First Time in Forever
by BetweenLines55
Summary: Xposted from AO3; Will's from Texas, he's never seen snow before until today. Fluff, basically.


Sure, Nico was Italian. He'd grown up in Italy, though he couldn't remember most of it, and Italy was seen as a pretty warm place.

But he'd seen snow before.

Although unusual, it snowed in Venice; and in the mountains, the Apennines and the Alps, it snowed plenty. And for Hades' sake, one of Nico's first memories of America was going to frigid, snowy boarding school in Maine.

In Maine, it snowed _too much_.

So yeah, Nico had seen snow. Been in the snow. Played in the snow. It was pretty, more or less, but after a while—when it iced over and turned black with dirt and soot from the street—it was more of an inconvenience if anything.

One place it didn't snow? Texas.

Will Solace was a tried-and-true Texan. Born under the flag of the Lone Star State and proudly so. He hadn't ventured out of the state's boarders until he was nine years old and headed for Camp Half Blood. Even then, he wasn't a year-round camper. He always returned home for Texan winters, which were mild and definitely lacking snow.

As it rarely dipped below 65 degrees Fahrenheit in the winter months, of course Will had never seen a white Christmas, or any snow for that matter.

So that's why Nico was rudely interrupted from his beauty sleep at the ungodly hour of eight in the morning to see Will standing over him, wearing a face splitting grin and practically bursting with excitement.

"Wha's-goin' on?" Nico slurred, trying to rub the sleep out of his eyes.

"Nico it's _snowing_." Will said, bouncing on the balls of his feet, "It's really snowing, come on, come see."

A second later, Nico found himself bodily dragged from the warm comfort of their bed to the window, where Nico could see, yes, it was snowing. Flat, white flakes of the stuff were falling relentlessly from the sky. From what he could see, about two or three inches had already accumulated over the streets, sidewalks, and grassy areas of DC.

The DC apartment was a new thing, they'd only moved in four months ago and it had only really gotten cold in the last two.

"Great." Nico grunted. Sue him but he was still crabby from getting rudely awakened, "Can I go back to bed now?"

The look Will gave him made it seem like Nico had just told him that Christmas was cancelled or Disney was filing for bankruptcy. "Don't you want to…go outside?"

Oh, right. This was new for Will. Nico sighed. The things he did for love.

"Ok, yeah, sorry. Give me five minutes to wake up and get dressed. Start some coffee and we can go outside, alright?" Nico said. He leaned up and kissed Will on the corner of his mouth as an apology for earlier.

"Awesome." Will said, grin returning. He scampered out of the room to get started on getting Nico his caffeine.

Nico took a look in his half of the closet. Even between them, they didn't have a lot of snow things in the apartment. Hats and coats and gloves sure, but no snow boots or snow pants or thermal shirts. Vaguely, Nico remembered buying a pair of snow boots, but for the life of him couldn't remember where he put them.

So he stuck to layering. T-shirt, long sleeve shirt, sweater. Boxers, long underwear (a gift from Sally last Christmas), jeans. Two pairs of socks. A beanie.

Nico, his range of motion limited with all his extra clothes on, waddled into the kitchen and found his boyfriend finishing up the coffee. "Here you are, grumpy-pants." Will said, not unkindly, as he handed Nico his mug.

Nico did the adult thing and blew his boyfriend a raspberry.

"You'll probably want to put on an extra pair of socks." Nico said, "It's cold outside."

Ten minutes later, they were walking down the steps of their apartment building to the small courtyard behind the complex. There, a few trees and picnic tables were dotted around the grassy area.

But as of now, everything was covered with a layer of white.

Nico and Will stopped short under the portico that extended off from the building. Just beyond them, the snow was falling.

Carefully, Will leaned down and took off one of his gloves. He pressed his hand into the snow for a few seconds before taking it back and look up at Nico with an intense expression of awe on his face.

"It's colder than I thought it would be." Will said. The sheer amount of wonder in his voice made Nico's breath catch in his chest.

Getting over himself, Nico smiled at his boyfriend and couldn't help but ask in a sing-song voice, "Do you wanna build a snowman~?"

Will grinned as he stood up, "Fuck off, you know that's exactly what I want to do."

There still wasn't a whole lot of snow on the ground, but half an hour later, they had a decent, three-foot-tall snowman with sticks for arms and pebbles to make up his facial features. Nico even took off his scarf and wrapped it around the snowman's neck, just to appease Will.

"You happy now?" Nico asked, wrapping his arms around Will's middle.

"Yes I am. Thank you, darlin'. This is so much cooler than I could've imagined. But now I'm starting to get cold."

Nico grinned and looked up at Will, "I can think of a few ways we could warm up." Will took the hint, leaning down to kiss Nico, soft and sweet and slow.

"Perfect," Will said, before kissing Nico again. "But you know what else I want?" Will mumbled against Nico's lips.

"What?" Nico asked, a little breathless, in between kisses

"Some hot cocoa."

That stopped Nico cold. "Wow, way to ruin the mood."

"Oh come on," Will said, "I see it in all the movies. Snowy day, hot cocoa, cuddling by the fire with you lover. I want that."

"We don't have a fireplace." Nico pointed out. Will pouted, even as he pulled Nico closer to him. "But," Nico relented, defenseless against The Pout™, "I guess we could pull up some Log TV on my laptop."

"Thank you, baby." Will smiled, pressing a kiss to Nico's forehead.

As they started to make their way back to the door and go inside, Will's arm wrapped tightly around Nico's waist. "Best day ever," Will said, "I always wanted to do this."

"We'll have hot cocoa by the fire," Nico agreed, "But I want my compensation afterwards."

Will grinned that boy-ish, lopsided smile of his—the one that made Nico's knees weak and his breath catch, "Wouldn't dream of denying you anything, darlin'."


End file.
